Cultural feminism advocates re-evaluating the skills and viewpoints of traditional women, re-evaluating women's contribution to culture and surpassing men's thinking framework. They criticized the religion centered on men and put forward various religions worshipped by goddesses. K Campbell rewrote the history of women in the book Men Can't Speak for Her. The work of E.F. Keller makes people reevaluate the work of geneticist barbara mcclintock and write a more complete and accurate history of science.
Cultural feminism advocates reassessing women's activities and ethical characteristics. Gilligan reevaluates the caring value of women, and thinks that men only value fairness and individual rights, but caring is not lower than fairness. Gilligan put forward: "Women's caring ethics, maternal thinking, peace and care are the most valuable ethics. If we can establish the image of women as social protectors and promote the care, nurturing and moral sense of women and motherhood, society will become better. " Therefore, the maternal movement appeared in the west. The mother's experience has a double meaning: it is not only the female's own experience, but also the patriarchal experience.
Cultural feminism believes that men and women have formed different values because of the process of nature (physiology) and upbringing (socialization), or because of the combination of the two. Women pay attention to establishing and maintaining a deep, intimate and caring relationship; Men are more willing to express their personality and control their own property and the fate of others. Cultural feminism rejects men's pursuit of political power, economic status and medical specialty, hoping to change the institutional relationship of competition and guide personal interests to the institutional relationship of cooperation, so as to achieve the goal of reaching the same goal by different routes. The ability of women to weave intimate relationships is the ability that women have in both private and public fields. The strategy of female knowledge construction advocated by cultural feminism is a combination of separation (linearity and authority) and connection (sympathy and individual).
Cultural feminism and structural feminism overlap in some aspects. Structuralist feminism holds that women are different from men. They have independent cultural and moral traditions, and they have the spirit of motherhood and cooperation. Cultural feminists believe that the value of women is superior to that of men because of their maternal instinct. The greatest trait of motherhood is tolerance and dedication. They embody the spirit of altruism and are the defenders of life. Women are different from men, but they are not born, they are acquired. The tradition of women staying at home makes them more educated, supportive and cooperative. Based on the standpoint theory, cultural feminism strives for special legal protection for women, and requires the law to admit that only women have children and men don't, so only women have special needs related to this and should be protected by law. A by-product of this new legal practice is to spread women's values to the whole society. 1At the end of the 9th century and the beginning of the 20th century, it was the feminist ideal of cultural feminism that inspired many women to devote themselves to social improvement and anti-war cause. The viewpoint of cultural feminism has gone through an evolutionary process, and the formation of its theory of female superiority has also gone through a gradual process. This evolution process can be summarized as three stages:
In the first stage, they advocated eliminating and reducing the physiological differences between men and women in order to eliminate gender discrimination;
In the second stage, they condemned the physiological characteristics of men and advocated exclusion and separation from men;
In the third stage, it turned to praise the physiological characteristics of women and advocated their physiological and moral superiority.
After denying the male nature, cultural feminism further affirms the female nature. At this time, they think that even if the physiological basis of gender differences between men and women is really eradicated, there is no guarantee that women will be liberated. Therefore, they no longer advocate eradicating the physiological differences between the two sexes, but praise the characteristics of women and call on the whole society and men to re-evaluate and accept the characteristics of women.
Different from liberal feminism, cultural feminism does not think that women are the same as men because they share the abilities of those men, but praises the uniqueness of women's characteristics. They believe that these characteristics should not be denied, but should be strongly affirmed, and men should also accept and cultivate these female characteristics. For example, passive, willing to take care of others' upbringing, emotional, dependent on others and so on. They cited the following reasons for this: "Passivity can avoid violent conflicts between people; Parenting can make people willing to take care of children, the poor and the injured; Worship of male rationality will destroy the planet. On the contrary, women's attention to emotion and intuition can avoid rationality and not feel life. Dependence is also absolutely necessary for the survival of the earth. Interdependence between men and women, between people and between man and nature is absolutely important. " All these characteristics should be re-evaluated.
Cultural feminists further suggest that if equality means being the same as male oppressors, they are not interested in equality with men. Therefore, they oppose some liberal feminist ideas that ignore the differences between men and women, such as women joining the army, but advocate that both men and women should not join the army, because the army is a mechanism for male chauvinism to exaggerate men, oppress women and destroy human and earth life.
As early as before the First World War, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, a famous feminist theorist, put forward the view that women are superior to men from the perspective of socialist feminism. In her view, gender relationship is the most basic force, which links femininity with human progress and socialism. She pointed out: "Women are the earliest hunters, thinkers, educators, administrators, managers and legislators in human history. They have the characteristics of care, love and protection. These qualities come from motherhood and are cultivated from the role of mother; Men don't have these qualities and must learn from women. The basic characteristics of men are violence, opposition, struggle and mutual trampling. A society characterized by male selfishness, competition and individualism will be replaced by a society characterized by female collectivism and socialism, benefiting everyone. Although some historians classify her as socialist feminism, I think her thoughts are closer to the cultural feminism that appeared later. "
Luce Irigaray, a famous French feminist who was criticized as an essentialist, raised the question "When can we become women" and called for the return of motherhood. Lacan bases his theory on male sexual behavior, while Irigaray does the opposite and bases his theory on female sexual behavior. Irigaray asked how to create female beauty, and her answer was: "As a woman, the most important thing is to admit that I am one of these women;" As a woman, I gave my children gender; As women, we are confined to some forms that are not suitable for us. We should break these forms and rediscover our own nature. The male-centered culture deprives us of the expression of our own image and limits the talent of women and motherhood. "
Iligret's thought on women's liberation has gone beyond the simple requirement of equality between men and women. She believes that as a woman, demanding equality is a wrong expression of a real problem. Women are exploited because of gender differences, and the only way to solve this problem is through gender differences. She criticized some feminists for seeking equality between men and women and advocated that women should be neutralized. She believes that neutralization is the loss of identity; Moreover, this neutralization, if possible, will mean the demise of mankind. The reason why human beings are divided into two sexes is to ensure their own reproduction and hope to get rid of gender differences. It calls for a kind of "genocide", which is more radical than any form of destruction in history. She pointed out that it is important to define the respective values of men and women; Social justice should endow women with characteristic cultural values.
She believes: "Our civilization lacks two kinds of respect, which is manifested in two kinds of injustice: the first is that women who give their lives to others are excluded from the order of men; The second is that girls can't get the same status as boys, are excluded from culture, and only exist as a fertile natural body. How can we get rid of this patriarchal order of male genital worship? " She put forward the following proposition: "Respect for life and parenting behavior should be restored; Establish the image of mother-daughter relationship in the family and the public; In the mother-daughter relationship, it is necessary to establish an interchangeable subject position; Mothers should instill sexual and non-hierarchical concepts in their children; It is necessary to emphasize the importance of women's living space-space other than fertility and satisfying men's desires. "
She believes that women tend to produce products necessary to maintain their lives in a peaceful and clean environment, which is a human choice; The female values that should be respected and the rights that women should strive for include: property and surname are passed from mother to daughter; The privilege of sisters; Women occupy an important position in religion; Respect the space and spirit of various local cultures; Respect natural foods such as fruits and grains; Respect the cycle of life, the cycle of the sun and the moon, and the changes of the four seasons; Higher moral standards based on love and peace; Establish a big community including all human beings; Emphasize the value of women in concluding contracts and resolving conflicts; Emphasize the value of women in the symbol system related to art and so on.
Iligery's point of view is bright and eye-catching, full of passion and romantic poetry, full of appeal and incitement. However, some critics think that she overestimates the importance of gender and bases women's culture entirely on physiological differences.
Catherine Mackinnon believes: "The real situation is that men and women experience sex under the condition of gender inequality. After observing many of my friends, I have come to the conclusion that, on average, men and women are equal for only two weeks. "
Sigmund freud's "penis envy" hypothesis has been criticized by cultural feminists. Freud once said: "We can see from many female mental patients that they were particularly envious of their brother's penis for a period of time in their early years, and they were frustrated by their lack of such an organ (actually, it is not really lacking, just relatively few). I feel that I have been abused in some way, which leads to this incomplete state. We can regard this "penis jealousy" as part of the "castration complex". ..... In this envy, there is a kind of' hope is male' meaning ... "Feminism retorts that women don't envy male organs at all, because they not only have their own corresponding organs, but also have better and more organs than men. They also assume that, according to Freud's logic, a mother's breasts can be regarded as an important factor in children's psychological development: girls are proud of having such breasts soon, while boys feel regret and envy because they can't have them. After all, babies have more contact with breasts than with penises. Honey, a famous psychologist, also discussed the "uterine jealousy" of men.
Cultural feminism clearly put forward the slogan of "women are superior". Some fierce essentialists trace the superiority of women back to the physiological basis, and the main arguments put forward are hormonal composition and fertility. It is said that men have hormone deficiency, and the relationship between male hormones and life is weak. In her influential book Eunuch, Germaine Greer pointed out: "Men have a series of weaknesses from the fetal period, which are called gender-related weaknesses. These weaknesses stem from genes found only in the Y chromosome. These weaknesses can lead to symptoms such as excessive hair, horny plaque and color blindness; In addition, about 30 kinds of dysfunction can be found in male species, but for the same reason, it is rarely found in female species. There is enough evidence that women are stronger and live longer than men. In each age group, there are more deaths among men than women, although the number of male fetuses is more than that of female fetuses 10% to 30%. The proportion of genius, madman and fool among men is higher than that of women, and women are more normal. "
Cultural feminists also put forward that women are natural pacifists; Men are warmongers; Women value the relational)； between people; Men are personalized); ; Women can feel pleasure everywhere; Men's pleasure is limited to genitals (penis fixation); When women engage in various behaviors, they can always get happiness from the whole process; Men are absorbed in goal orientation, and so on. From this, they come to the conclusion that women are more suitable and capable of leading this society than aggressive and self-centered men. Cultural feminists admire femininity and advocate replacing intellectuality with sensibility; Replace combative temperament with natural peace-loving temperament; Deify motherhood as a creative act.